A typical household refrigeration apparatus comprises a refrigerator compartment and a freezer compartment. The freezer compartment often includes an automatic ice making apparatus. For convenience, such refrigeration apparatus may include a through-the-door ice dispensing apparatus which can provide for the dispensing of both whole, or cubed, ice or crushed ice. The term "cubed ice" can refer to crescent-shaped ice bodies as well as any other shape that has not been crushed or otherwise broken up into small or irregular shaped pieces.
A typical through-the-door ice dispensing apparatus includes an ice container assembly in the freezer compartment having a container for storing ice cubes and means for conveying ice cubes from the container to a downwardly facing discharge opening. A chute is typically provided to provide a passageway through the door and opens into a dispenser opening for delivering ice when an ice lever is actuated to request delivery of ice cubes or crushed ice. In known prior art refrigeration apparatus, the ice chute generally terminates inside of the freezer compartment at an opening in a horizontal plane comprising a portion of an interior door panel.
Problems can arise when the design of the refrigeration apparatus has been modified to accommodate different requirements. For example, some refrigeration apparatus are provided with deeper doors which ca be utilized to provide additional storage capacity without substantially changing the cabinet arrangement. At the same time, the vertical location of a dispenser housing on the exterior of the door is typically desired at a particular height from the floor to better accommodate users as well as to present a uniform desirable appearance on a sales room floor when several different models are aligned side-by-side.
Also, it is necessary that the opening of the ice chute be high enough and wide enough so that neither cubes nor crushed ice will hang up or jam the chute as by accumulation of particles, while providing adequate slope along the bottom of the chute to compel falling ice to continue its movement as desired through the dispenser opening.
The present invention is intended to solve one or more of the problems discussed above in a novel manner.